Centuries Poll – The Short Fiction

The folks at Locus have been busy over the Holidays, and the results of the short fiction categories are now available. These results are much more in tune with what I would have voted for, and I suspect that’s not unconnected with the fact that there appear to be fewer voters. I say “appear” because the lower number of voters per item could also indicate a wider selection. That may also be the case. It certainly is in the Hugos. But I’d be quite interested to see a comparison of the number of people who voted in each category, and how many picks they had. I suspect there will be variation all the way from people who filled the entire ballot to people who just voted for one or two novels.

Anyway: Ted Chaing, yay! Kij Johnson, yay! Kelly Link, yay! Margo Lanagan, yay! And so on. I’m particularly pleased to see two Clarkesworld stories: “The Things” by Peter Watts and “Spar” by Kij Johnson make the top 10 of 21st Century short stories.

One final thought. I suspect that if Dune had been published today, and been written by a woman, it would have been marketed as “fantasy”.